The invention relates to a blanket apparatus for distribution of a flow of pressurized conditioned air into a zone around the body of a bed occupant. More specifically, the invention relates to an engineered layer of bedding that connects to a supply of pressurized conditioned air that evenly distributes such conditioned air to a single specific zone of the bed. The invention additionally contemplates connection of two independent supplies of conditioned air into the single layer of engineered bedding to evenly distribute such independent supplies into specific dual zone areas about the multiple bed occupants, thus providing independently conditioned zones within the bed for each occupant. The invention further avoids the feeling of foreign and unnatural apparatus in the bed to the occupants by providing for a bedding texture against the skin of ordinary cotton linens and comforters.
The body of the average person releases a substantial amount of heat through skin loss and moisture due to perspiration to the surrounding air. The usual practice of covering the body during sleeping has the effect of insulating the body from the surrounding room air and thereby holds such released heat and moisture in the air about the body.
In cold weather when the room temperature may be below 70 F. heavy covering is frequently employed so as to minimize the exchange of air about the body with the surrounding room air and thus has the effect of increasing the air temperature and humidity about the body. In such instances a person will often throw off the covering while asleep, which will then result in chilling.
In warm weather when the room temperature is above 70 F., a lighter covering is usually employed but the moisture which results from perspiration is still retained about the body by the insulating covering, causing personal discomfort and results in poor rest.
The obese and the bedridden are particularly troubled by these conditions of the air environment about the body. Many home and hospital patients have body temperature conditions which ideally require controlled surrounding air and humidity conditions within the bed environment.
Room air conditioners which have heretofore been provided for regulating the room air temperature and humidity conditions have the disadvantages of handling large volumes of air, requiring special electrical power, and are relatively expensive for installation, operation and maintenance costs. Even with room air conditioners, the person usually employs some form of covering which insulates the body from the surrounding air so there remains no suitable means of exchanging the air between the body and the covering of the occupant's bed.
There are a many causes of the various known sleep disorders. Of these causes the physical comfort of the person attempting to sleep or rest is paramount, for if a person's ambient surroundings are not conducive to their personal comfort, sleep can become extremely difficult to achieve, if at all. One factor in the person's environment that has a bearing on their ability to achieve sleep is the ambient temperature. If the temperature of the surroundings of a person is either too hot or too cold, restful sleep may be impossible. Of particular concern is the case where the surroundings are too hot, because in such cases the body's ability to control its internal temperature may be effected to the point where the body begins to sweat, and it is nearly impossible to achieve restful sleep while sweating. Thus, maintaining the ambient temperature at a level which is conducive to sleep is a key to enabling a person to sleep.
Means for controlling the ambient temperature in a person's surroundings are known to include the provision of “air conditioning” in which an air conditioner utilizing the principles of Joule-Thomson cooling is employed to extract heat from a volume of air, such as a bedroom. While air conditioners are highly effective at coarsely controlling the temperature in a room, the customary preference for persons to sleep beneath one or more bed sheets, covers, blankets, etc., coupled with the body's tendency to liberate heat during its normal operation translates to the well-known situation in which the person resting beneath the sheets cannot get comfortable because they are too hot, which is compounded by the proposition that if they remove the covers or sheets from themselves then they become too cold.
Owing to variance between selected individual human subjects' metabolism, genetics, etc. the method used in the fine tuning control of one's body temperature becomes a matter of personal taste or preference, and many individuals have typically been observed to develop their own personal habits of effecting such fine tuning, such as sleeping with more or less clothing, permitting part of the body to be exposed to the open air, etc. It is a common observation that two individuals sharing a bed may have widely different requirements of hot and cold within the ambient air of the bedding for comfortable sleep.
In spite of these efforts, however, perfect control of the temperature of ambient surroundings of persons in a bed desiring to sleep has been fleeting, with particular difficulty for partners who share a bed with different sleep temperature preferences. This fact is evidenced by the myriad of schemes and contrivances provided by workers in the prior art for effecting thermal control over a bed or region in which a person normally rests for sleep utilizing a pressurized flow of air, the following few of which are exemplary, and are herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
While there are conventional devices and methods that achieve to a greater or less extent their desired objectives, they are nevertheless lacking features which have heretofore prevented their widespread adoption by large numbers of people. They fail to provide a bedding apparatus that can evenly distribute a pressurized flow of air through a bed into both one or two independent zones, while not causing ballooning of bedding due to flow of air. Moreover, there are conventional devices and methods that introduce either foreign textures or objects to the user in the bed, which is a highly undesirable feature.
Thus, there exists a need for an improved system for distributing both warm and ventilated or cool conditioned air throughout a bed into one or two zones, while not introducing elements or textures to the users that were previously foreign to the bed, while also avoiding giving rise to a ballooning effect of the bedding while delivering the pressurized air.